Zoos "Zoothanize" Many Healthy Animals According to BBC

The killing of Marius, a young and healthy giraffe at the Copenhagen Zoo, has resulted in a good deal of press about the ways in which zoos deal with what they call "surplus animals." It also has been responsible for motivating many people to speak out against this most inhumane practice. I call this "The Marius Effect" (see also) and the killing of these animals "zoothanasia" not euthanasia, or what zoos call "management euthanasia," which is mercy-killing those animals who are in interminable pain or mortally ill. These animals are healthy beings who do not have to be killed!

While some claim that killing animals like Marius because they are useless to a zoo's breeding program only occurs very rarely, this is not the case according to a recent essay by Hannah Barnes called "How many healthy animals do zoos put down?" published in BBC News Magazine. And, not only are the facts rather startling and disturbing, so is the language that zoo administrators and others use to refer to the animals themselves.

Words count: Animals are not "things" to be killed with regrettable apathy

Here are a few snippets from the BBC essay that should motivate you to read this essay and do something about the prevalence of zoothanasia.

"This is not a thing that should go anywhere outside Denmark," says Copenhagen Zoo's Scientific Director Bengt Holst, responding to the barrage of critical news coverage. "We all know it's done every day."

"EAZA does not publish these records or advertise the number of healthy animals that have been culled, but executive director Dr. Lesley Dickie estimates that somewhere between 3,000 and 5,000 animals are 'management-euthanised' in European zoos in any given year."

"The numbers game can be made to sound awful," says Simon Tonge Executive Director of South West Environmental Parks, which runs Paignton and Newquay zoos in the UK. "The headline 'Zoos euthanize thousands of animals per year' would be misleading," he says. "Well OK, but you know most of those animals were rats or mice or something like that."

Animals are not things, but referring to them as if they are unfeeling objects with whom we can do anything we choose makes it easier to kill them routinely and unnecessarily with disarming and regrettable apathy and disregard. The lives of individual animals matter very much, as stressed by those working in the rapidly growing field of compassionate conservation (see also).

How zoos handle what they call "surplus animals" who many view as "things" is a fertile area for research in anthrozoology, the study of human-animal relationships, including the words we use to refer to other animals and the business of science itself.

Yeah, I'll tilt at this. Most of this whole article(and it's BBC link) is rather vague, and note, American readers, it is discussing SOME European zoos, then subtly manages to generalize this by the end to ALL ZOOS--which is simply inaccurate. IF this kind of callous euthanasia of healthy young animals is going on in Europe(especially, according to this article, Denmark), then I'm(a zookeeper myself) all for bringing it to the public light and trying to get more humane treatment for their zoo animals. My outlook is that IF NOWHERE ELSE, by gosh, animals in a zoo SHOULD get humane consideration and treatment and management! Perhaps the American AZA has better guidelines and policing--hard to say, as these incidents get blown out of all realistic proportion. I DO know the zoo I work at is above board on it's euthanasia, and even has regular press releases to the public to inform them when beloved old animals pass away, or must be put down for humane or health reasons. We don't breed unless animals are specifically requested for other zoos, or are to be used for endangered species programs(including releases to bolster wild populations). This is standard for all major GOOD zoos in America. Unrealistic people often don't think things through very well, and seem to forget that there is a natural MORTALITY in any population--things get old and die(as we all do eventually), and, alas sometimes accidents or diseases happen(usually FAR LESS than in the wild, of course--veterinary care being one of the benefits to animals in zoos) despite everyones' best efforts to prevent them. With buhzillions of zoos, containing kuhzillions of animals, the annual death rate IS going to seem high--just as statistics are for humans dying for various reasons. This SHOULD be common sense. As for killing perfectly healthy young animals, this must be a "European thing" IF these articles are true--breeding management tends to be carefully controlled in various ways, and is one of those things you CAN control in captivity. So, do the European zoos not know how to separate the boys from the girls, if they don't want breeding? Have they heard of contraceptives? What about good old fashioned spaying and neutering? For the life of me, I cannot believe they DON"T know all this, so these articles are suspect to me. Regarding the THOUSANDS of mice and rats that get "euthanized" mentioned--uh, what zoo EXHIBITS mice and rats? Maybe some rare wild species, but they certainly aren't euthanizing THOUSANDS of them! Folks, when you have CARNIVORES in captivity, you have to feed them MEAT. A fact of life humaniacs cannot come to terms with. A dilemma, I know. But the carnivore mammals, birds, and reptiles are commonly fed domestic mice and rats bred for that purpose. Some zoos raise their own, so must euthanize them before feeding. My zoo, luckily buys them frozen and packaged, so we don't have to deal with the unfortunate(but necessary) trauma of killing our own rodents. I'm sure this MUST be what the fellow is referring to when it was mentioned thousands of mice and rats got euthanized! But who knows--so much of this article focuses on just the negative aspects without further explanation(conveniantly for propaganda purposes, it seems), it's hard to tell........